V. I. Lenin

Stop Spoiling The Russian Language

Some Thoughts At Leisure, I.E., While Listening To Speeches At
Meetings[1]

Written: December, 1919
First Published:
First published in Pravda No. 275; December 3, 1924; Published according to the manuscriptSource: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, page 298Translated: George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

We are spoiling the Russian language. We are using foreign
words unnecessarily. And we use them incorrectly. Why use the
foreign word defekty when we have three Russian
synonyms—nedochoty nedosta tki, probely.

A man who has recently learned to read in. general, and to read
newspapers in particular, will, of course, if he reads them
diligently, willy-nilly absorb journalistic turns of
speech. However, it is the language of the newspapers that is
beginning to suffer. If a man who has recently learned to read
uses foreign words as a novelty, he is to be excused, but there is
no excuse for a writer. Is it not time for us to declare war on
the unnecessary use of foreign words?

I must admit that the unnecessary use of foreign words annoys
me (because it makes it more difficult for us to exercise our
influence over the masses) but some of the mistakes made by those
who write in the newspapers make me really angry. For
instance—the word budirovat is used in the meaning
of arouse, awaken, stir up. It comes from the French word
bonder which means to sulk, to pout, which is what
budirovat should really mean. This adoption of
Nizhni-Novgorod French is the adoption of the worst from the worst
representatives of the Russian landowning class, who learned some
French but who, first, did not master the language, and who,
secondly, distorted the Russian language.

Is it not time to declare war on the spoiling of Russian?

Endnotes

[1]
This item was written by Lenin in 1919 or 1920 at one of the
meetings of the Political Bureau of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.). It was
found at the end of 1924 and first published in
Pravda. The exact time when it was written has not been
established.